Creative exercises to connect concepts in organic chemistry

Students need to make meaningful connections between concepts rather than memorising isolated facts to develop expertise in chemistry. This is especially important in organic chemistry, where understanding the relationships between structure, reactivity and mechanisms is key.

Assessment approaches, such as concept maps, can be valuable tools. But they are highly open-ended and time-consuming to administer and assess. In response, researchers have explored alternative strategies, including the use of creative exercises (CEs).

A CE is a prompt that invites students to generate a list of distinct, accurate and relevant statements about a given concept. CEs offer a flexible, yet structured, way to assess the breadth and interconnectedness of students’ chemical understanding.

In a 2025 paper, researchers examined how educators can use CEs to assess student thinking in organic chemistry. It involved 79 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory organic chemistry course. The curriculum covered a range of foundational topics, including covalent bonding and molecular shapes, acids and bases, and hydrocarbons and their derivatives with various functional groups.

Each CE prompt asked students to ‘Write down five correct, distinct and relevant facts about …’ The researchers designed the exercises to be concise and efficient, taking only a few minutes to complete, while still revealing valuable information about students’ conceptual understanding.

Over time, students’ CE responses demonstrated a wider range of topics and they drew more connections

The research team introduced CEs through an in-class activity before the first exam. Students completed an initial CE in small groups and then participated in a whole-class discussion led by the instructor. This activity helped establish shared expectations for what constituted a correct, relevant response. Following this introduction, they included one CE as a bonus question, worth up to five points, on each of the three course exams and the final exam.

Connecting concepts

The researchers developed a detailed coding scheme that captured the types of connections students made in their answers. Over time, students’ CE responses demonstrated a wider range of topics and drew more connections between newly learned and previously covered material. This trend suggested that students were gradually building a more interconnected understanding of organic chemistry.

However, the CEs also revealed persistent misconceptions, particularly in areas such as chemical nomenclature and assigning molecular configurations. Additionally, when comparing responses, the researchers found that students who performed well on the CEs tended to make different types of connections than those who did less well. This offered insights into how they might structure their knowledge. CE scores also showed moderate correlation with overall exam scores, suggesting that the exercises tapped into meaningful aspects of student learning.

Student feedback was positive, with most students indicating that they valued the exercises and would like to see them again in future courses.